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Q.B. Lone

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Conference paper (2022) - Q.B. Lone, Alisa Frik, Matthew Luckie, MacIej Korczyński, M.J.G. van Eeten, C. Hernandez Ganan
IP spoofing, sending IP packets with a false source IP address, continues to be a primary attack vector for large-scale Denial of Service attacks. To combat spoofing, various interventions have been tried to increase the adoption of source address validation (SAV) among network operators. How can SAV deployment be increased? In this work, we conduct the first randomized control trial to measure the effectiveness of various notification mechanisms on SAV deployment. We include new treatments using nudges and channels, previously untested in notification experiments. Our design reveals a painful reality that contrasts with earlier observational studies: none of the notification treatments significantly improved SAV deployment compared to the control group. We explore the reasons for these findings and report on a survey among operators to identify ways forward. A portion of the operators indicate that they do plan to deploy SAV and ask for better notification mechanisms, training, and support materials for SAV implementation. ...

Measuring the adoption of Source Address Validation (SAV) by network providers

Doctoral thesis (2022) - Q.B. Lone, M.J.G. van Eeten, C. Hernandez Ganan
IP spoofing is the act of forging source IP addresses assigned to a host machine. Spoofing provides users the ability to hide their identity and impersonate another machine. Malicious users use spoofing to invoke a variety of attacks. Examples are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, policy evasion and a range of application-level attacks. Despite source IP address spoofing being a known vulnerability for at least 25 years, and despite many efforts to shed light on the problem, spoofing remains a popular attack method for redirection, amplification and anonymity. Defeating these attacks requires operators to ensure that their networks filter packets with spoofed source IP addresses. This is a Best Current Practice (BCP), known as Source Address Validation (SAV). Yet, widespread SAV adoption is hindered by a misalignment of incentives: networks that adopt SAV incur the cost of deployment, while the security benefits diffuse to all other networks. The challenges posed by SAV adoption exemplify the failure of traditional governance models to provide solutions in the Internet ecosystem. Policy interventions usually require transparency in measurements to quantify and assess the vulnerability landscape. However, measuring SAV requires a vantage point inside the network or in the upstream provider of the network. Once a packet with a spoofed source address leaves the upstream network provider, it is almost impossible to ascertain its origin... ...
Conference paper (2020) - MacIej Korczyński, Yevheniya Nosyk, Qasim Lone, Marcin Skwarek, Baptiste Jonglez, Andrzej Duda
This paper reports on the first Internet-wide active measurement study to enumerate networks not filtering incoming packets based on their source address. Our method identifies closed and open DNS resolvers handling requests from the outside of the network with the source address in the prefix of the tested network. The study gives the most complete picture of the inbound Source Address Validation deployment at network providers: 32,673 IPv4 ASes and 197,641 IPv4 BGP prefixes are vulnerable to spoofing of inbound traffic. ...
Conference paper (2020) - Maciej Korczyński, Yevheniya Nosyk, Qasim Lone, Marcin Skwarek, Baptiste Jonglez, Andrzej Duda
This paper concerns the problem of the absence of ingress filtering at the network edge, one of the main causes of important network security issues. Numerous network operators do not deploy the best current practice—Source Address Validation (SAV) that aims at mitigating these issues. We perform the first Internet-wide active measurement study to enumerate networks not filtering incoming packets by their source address. The measurement method consists of identifying closed and open DNS resolvers handling requests coming from the outside of the network with the source address from the range assigned inside the network under the test. The proposed method provides the most complete picture of the inbound SAV deployment state at network providers. We reveal that 32 673 Autonomous Systems (ASes) and 197 641 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) prefixes are vulnerable to spoofing of inbound traffic. Finally, using the data from the Spoofer project and performing an open resolver scan, we compare the filtering policies in both directions. ...
Conference paper (2018) - Qasim Lone, Matthew Luckie, MacIej Korczyński, Hadi Asghari, Mobin Javed, Michel Van Eeten
Internet measurement tools are used to make inferences about network policies and practices across the Internet, such as censorship, traffic manipulation, bandwidth, and security measures. Some tools must be run from vantage points within individual networks, so are dependent on volunteer recruitment. A small pool of volunteers limits the impact of these tools. Crowdsourcing marketplaces can potentially recruit workers to run tools from networks not covered by the volunteer pool. We design an infrastructure to collect and synchronize measurements from five crowdsourcing platforms, and use that infrastructure to collect data on network source address validation policies for CAIDA's Spoofer project. In six weeks we increased the coverage of Spoofer measurements by recruiting 1519 workers from within 91 countries and 784 unique ASes for 2,000 Euro; 342 of these ASes were not previously covered, and represent a 15% increase in ASes over the prior 12 months. We describe lessons learned in recruiting and renumerating workers; in particular, strategies to address worker behavior when workers are screened because of overlap in the volunteer pool. ...
Conference paper (2017) - Qasim Lone, Matthew Luckie, Maciej Korczyński, Michel Van Eeten
Despite source IP address spoofing being a known vulnerability for at least 25 years, and despite many efforts to shed light on the problem, spoofing remains a popular attack method for redirection, amplification, and anonymity. To defeat these attacks requires operators to ensure their networks filter packets with spoofed source IP addresses, known as source address validation (SAV), best deployed at the edge of the network where traffic originates. In this paper, we present a new method using routing loops appearing in traceroute data to infer inadequate SAV at the transit provider edge, where a provider does not filter traffic that should not have come from the customer. Our method does not require a vantage point within the customer network. We present and validate an algorithm that identifies at Internet scale which loops imply a lack of ingress filtering by providers. We found 703 provider ASes that do not implement ingress filtering on at least one of their links for 1,780 customer ASes. Most of these observations are unique compared to the existing methods of the Spoofer and Open Resolver projects. By increasing the visibility of the networks that allow spoofing, we aim to strengthen the incentives for the adoption of SAV. ...
This documents presents the final report of a two-year project to evaluate the impact of AbuseHUB, a Dutch clearinghouse for acquiring and processing abuse data on infected machines. The report was commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, a co-funder of the development of AbuseHUB. AbuseHUB is the initiative of 9 Internet Service Providers, SIDN (the registry for the .nl top-level domain) and Surfnet (the national research and education network operator). The key objective of AbuseHUB is to improve the mitigation of botnets by its members. We set out to assess whether this objective is being reached by analyzing malware infection levels in the networks of AbuseHUB members and comparing them to those of other Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Since AbuseHUB members together comprise over 90 percent of the broadband market in the Netherlands, it also makes sense to compare how the country as a whole has performed compared to other countries. This report complements the baseline measurement report produced in December 2013 and the interim report from March 2015. We are using the same data sources as in the interim report, which is an expanded set compared to the earlier baseline report and to our 2011 study into botnet mitigation in the Netherlands. ...